A Day Too Long
Splash, splash.
The water had risen to my chest.
Even here, perched on top of a pipe, at a height where my head nearly brushed the ceiling.
Gazing at the surface of death that had crept right up to my face, I confessed to my companions.
Or to be precise, to Yu Hyeonjae among them.
"I'm experiencing temporal regression. Right now."
As for what had happened in the meantime……
There had been deaths.
Several deaths that accomplished nothing, despite the handful of tiny flashlights sold at convenience stores.
Several deaths incurred on the way to crossing the threshold of the sprouting pain without seizing up, managing to buy a flashlight in a single lump payment, and escaping intact.
Several deaths in which I offered up my brain, heart, lungs, blood, bones, and skin as the price of choosing misfortune at Happy Land.
Several deaths in which I was silenced so thoroughly by the serpent-tipped wand—fresh off receiving the emcee's kiss at Future Arcade and bearing a precious Life—that my whole body felt crushed to paste.
Even past all those deaths, whenever I gathered up every light we had, the light was never enough, the water always overflowed, and I was forever suffocating.
It was time to admit it.
That the moment had come to take a different path.
Not down. Up.
To a place I had never once been.
The moment had arrived to climb toward an unknown floor—not descending from the third floor, where the interview room had been, to the second.
"So, to be precise……"
I looked away from Choi Jaeha and Lee Nahyun, who looked like they lacked even the energy to scream at me for spouting nonsense in a situation like this.
And I looked Yu Hyeonjae straight in the eye.
He was, at the very least, the person with the deepest understanding of the labyrinth among everyone I'd met.
Also the cleverest.
Even—to the point of being downright vicious, without any particular malice behind it.
If I was going to ask for advice—if I had to ask anyone—it had to be this man.
"Every time I die, time rewinds. Back to the moment I was hearing the final question of my interview."
So I said it. For the first time, honestly.
Besides, the road ahead wasn't long, and in a little while we'd all be drowning together in friendly harmony anyway.
There was nothing to lose by coming clean.
"……"
The resident conspiracy theorist of Yuwi Guild said nothing for a while.
How would he react?
Would he nod along and fire off a barrage of questions?
Or would he try to kill me as an experiment?
But the first question out of him was an unexpected one.
"I take it you can't see a way out? Which means we're certain to die now. Without a single escape route left."
This time, it was I who was at a loss for words.
"You must have lost faith in me, Seon Yuhan. Confessing only at the brink of death—I can see how that would read."
Give him one word and he'll extrapolate all the way from one to ten.
I couldn't decide whether to call him exhausting to deal with, or downright convenient.
"Uh, hold on a second……"
Choi Jaeha, who had barely survived losing an arm, forced his mouth open.
His face said he didn't understand a word of this.
"So… you're saying you actually believe him, sir……?"
"Of course I believe him."
"Why? How?"
"Hmm……?"
Lee Nahyun, beside Choi Jaeha, scrunched up her face right along with him.
"Okay, both of you—that thing, that labyrinth-regression theory? You actually believe in that……?"
"I'm sorry to ask, but are you and Seon Yuhan both just… slightly insane right now?"
It was the first moment Choi Jaeha had ever flat-out insulted Yu Hyeonjae to his face.
Every hypothesis suggesting time travel is possible within labyrinths—into the future or the past—holds, quite literally, the status of conspiracy theory.
In the minds of anyone with their sanity intact, it ranks right alongside flat-earthism.
The problem being, the Earth is still round, and I am actually experiencing temporal regression.
"But Jaeha, who cares. It's not like……"
Lee Nahyun, who had only just managed to pull herself together earlier, twisted her face toward tears again and let her sentence trail off.
She meant: we're going to die anyway, so what does it matter if we've gone mad.
"Hah……. Right. Fine. Whatever."
Choi Jaeha frowned like his shoulder blade was aching, then shook his head.
Apparently he had no desire to spend the final hours of his life butting heads with lunatic conspiracy theorists.
"So. How many times have you gone through it?"
The lunatic conspiracy theorist was undaunted.
"Hard to say. I think I'm coming up on ninety or so."
"Ha!"
A scornful laugh rang out. From Choi Jaeha.
"Yeah, you've properly lost it……"
It was a small mutter, as if talking to himself.
But we were all packed in close together, so it came through as clear as a whisper.
"Hey. Excuse me, Seon Yuhan."
Bloodshot veins crept into the deathly pale eyes of Choi Jaeha.
"Fine. Let's say you really did die—ninety times, a hundred times, whatever."
Was he angry?
That anger resembled the flicker of a candle sputtering back to life just before it dies, and I liked it.
"Then…… why did you let Jiho die? If you'd died that many times, and lived that many times, huh? What about Hwang Juyeon? Lee Jinsu? My arm……. Why did all of that happen? Why are we in this state right now?"
Only, his fury had come knocking on the wrong door.
Everyone becomes a lost child in the face of death.
"There had to have been a better way. You should have worked harder to find it, shouldn't you? Is finding a way for you alone to survive all it takes? Is that it?"
"Mr. Choi Jaeha."
Without meaning to, my head tilted to one side.
"You seem to be laboring under a misunderstanding."
"What?"
"The labyrinth is not some romantic place where you escape by hunting down and choosing the option that saves everyone. And I'm not that kind of person, either."
How had he come by such a delusion in the first place?
"Oh, no, wow! And so you just leave people to die? You really are a psycho, you bastard? And you have no intention of trying harder? People can die or not, you won't lift a finger to save them? If you could really turn back time, the first thing you'd be thinking about is saving as many as you possibly could."
"Why would I have to do that?"
"Why? You're asking why? Because that's what a person does! Because that's what the fuck you owe people! Maybe a nutjob like you wouldn't get it, but that's what anyone with a working mind has to do!"
Anyone with a working mind?
My life had been one long, relentless process of being shown that I was not one of the 'sane.'
"Why on earth would I have to become that kind of person……?"
It didn't make sense.
"Why should I be the one to bear all of that? And for other people, no less—people who aren't me? If I can come back to life, is it fine to die as many times as it takes? If it all gets restored anyway, is it fine to be carved apart, again and again? If none of it ever happened, is it fine to sink beneath the water as many times as it takes?"
"……"
"Why is that acceptable for me? Why does it have to be me?"
"……"
"I don't want to die anymore. Please……"
Just—please.
But I knew no worthy answer would come down to meet my plea.
"I'll help as much as I can, and save as many as I can save. That's all. So."
I cannot die. And I must not.
That alone is my principle.
The one and only principle that stands before every other rule.
"Find your messiah somewhere else."
"You. You, you really……. So it's true."
Choi Jaeha's mouth worked open and shut, and he got that far before clamping shut completely.
"For ninety deaths, though."
A low voice cut into the silence.
"You seem remarkably intact."
His judgment's a bit off too, that one.
Maybe that's what happens when your time is up.
"Perhaps because I was never intact to begin with?"
He certainly knew how to turn a phrase.
"In any case, what do you plan to do now? There must be a reason you brought all this up."
"……I'm going to find the electrical room. So that next time, I can go up."
"Ahh."
Yu Hyeonjae nodded as if he understood.
"You've been descending straight down from the start all this while, haven't you? Never once gone up."
"That's right."
"Then I suppose we won't be seeing each other for some time? Any of us. Ah—though I imagine you'll still run into Mr. Choi Jaeha. You two did come down together, on the same floor, from the very beginning."
Choi Jaeha, who'd been keeping his mouth clamped shut and staring off elsewhere, flinched at the sound of his own name.
"Whoa—so, uh, Yuhan, then……. You really do keep, coming back? Every time……?"
Lee Nahyun kept glancing over furtively, like a puppy caught chewing the sofa and scolded for it.
"What happens to the rest of us? After you d— no, after you pass on, what about everyone else? Do we go back with you? Or do you go off somewhere else entirely, like a different parallel world?"
"I don't know that either."
Whether we all rewind together along a single timeline, or whether each of my deaths and returns spawns a brand-new world.
"There's no way to check."
Frankly, I wasn't even curious.
I had no need to know.
What mattered was one thing only: how I was going to make it out of this labyrinth alive.
That was all.
"We could find out right now by killing you, Seon Yuhan. And seeing what becomes of us afterward."
"I'm sorry?"
"What did you just say?"
At the madman's remark, not only Lee Nahyun but Choi Jaeha too recoiled in horror.
"That was a joke."
"We know it wasn't."
"My, I really have lost a great deal of your trust, haven't I? I wonder where. I'm curious."
"In behavior like this, just now."
And then Yu Hyeonjae laughed out loud. Genuinely delighted, it sounded.
For the first time, he looked a little closer to his age.
"Oh, honestly……"
The laughing-turned CEO of Yuwi Guild wiped the tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.
"In any case. So you're stepping onto a path you've never once walked."
"……Yes."
"And?"
"I'm sorry?"
"And what do you want us to do about it."
I stared blankly at Yu Hyeonjae.
Not because of that unfamiliar tone I'd never heard from him—but because of the realization it had just handed me.
"What difference does it make, telling us this? We won't be on that road. We have nothing to give you."
Ah.
Advice was never what I wanted.
I was……
"Although."
Afraid.
So afraid I couldn't bear it unless I poured it out to someone.
"There is one thing I'd like you to remember."
Now I had to turn around, and take my first step upward.
There would be rules I didn't know.
There would be deaths I didn't know.
There would be people I didn't know.
There would be labyrinths I didn't know.
What you don't know, you cannot understand.
What you cannot understand, you fear.
"If you ever need help, come down whenever you like. Where to find us—you'd know better than anyone, wouldn't you, Seon Yuhan?"
How much more time would have to flow before those things stopped frightening me?
"……Yes. I'll do that."
For all the effort it took to get the words out, they came out surprisingly smooth.
"Thank you. Truly."
"Yeah, I know. And I know that wasn't a lie."
Figures he would.
"One thing I'm curious about."
"Yes, go ahead."
"Could you tell me your impressions? Of experiencing temporal regression."
"Ah……"
Let me think.
I'm sure I had a great deal to say about it, once.
I don't really know anymore.
Right now, all I feel is……
"A day."
It's tedious.
So tedious that even the feeling of tedium has become tedious.
"The days feel far too long. Especially today……"
Ha.
A limp, air-leaking sigh escaped me.
Or perhaps it was a laugh.
"I see."
The conspiracy theorist, duly compensated for his strange faith, gave a small nod.
Somewhere along the way the waterline had climbed to my throat, and my chin touched its surface, sending out tiny ripples.
"In any case…… thank you for being honest with me about the temporal regression. It can't have been easy. No matter how thoroughly our memories are erased."
Yu Hyeonjae gazed down into the water, his eyes lowered just slightly, and spoke softly.
"So, since we've come this far—if I were to confess a secret of my own as well……"
Don't, you lunatic.